Pace Slows on Commercial Strip

By Chastity Pratt | STAFF WRITER

September 21, 2001

On this stretch of 37th Avenue in Jackson Heights, it seems everybody knows somebody.

Or they've stared in awe at the memorial built for their neighbor - a firefighter who is missing.

Or they've waited in vain for the lunch crowd to return to their restaurant, or for someone to buy a china pattern from their gift shop, or for more people to come into their salon for a haircut.

The few dozen stores located along the two blocks between 78th and 80th Streets are a half-hour subway ride away from the World Trade Center site. But the folks who live and work along the strip are learning more each day that the collapse of the Twin Towers is something that hit excruciatingly close to home.

The most visible effect is a candle-lit memorial in front of a gift store named Inner Peace, near the corner of 80th.

The store, owned by Tanya Bejasa, has been closed since the attacks. Her fiance, Sergio Villanueva, is among the firefighters missing.

About two blocks away, Democratic City Council candidate Rudy Greco Jr. stamps campaign posters in his office. Greco, who is Villanueva's lawyer, said Villanueva had left the police force to become a fireman. Villanueva had given Bejasa an engagement ring about a month ago, Greco said, and the couple recently bought a co-op in the neighborhood.

During the Sept. 11 attack, Greco said, Villanueva "was doing what he loved to do."

Greco's clients have relayed grisly details. One works at the dump site on Staten Island where the debris is being examined, another works at the Burn Center of New York Weill Cornell Medical Center.

"Animals don't do this to one another," Greco said of the destruction. "This is a cancer."

No international calls are being made from the 20 phone booths at Unitel Communications on 37th Avenue at the corner of 79th Street. The phones went down with the Twin Towers, an employee said.

A few doors down, at Flagship Entertainment, employees say business is slower, although the video store can't keep a copy of "Nostradamus" on the shelves. The employees said they were struck by the photos they developed for customers over the past few days: Shots apparently taken from rooftops and bridges as the towers fell.

"The pictures got to me, but a lady selling pictures of the World Trade falling" angered employee Michael Pasquale. "How the hell can you try to profit off of this?" he said.

Nearby is Las Brasas Restaurant, whose owner, José Moncholi, has a friend whose missing daughter is seven months pregnant. She and her husband worked at the World Trade Center, he said, and both are missing.

The night of the tragedy, Moncholi said, a man who came in for dinner talked of how he had escaped from the 66th floor. Moncholi waived the man's dinner bill.

Moncholi remembers seeing the crews excavating to build the Twin Towers. A sales and marketing employee for Iberia Airlines at the time, he had visited the towers often. Yesterday, as the TV in Las Brasas was tuned to CNBC, Moncholi lamented that 65 tourists from Spain were supposed to be having lunch in his dining room.

The reservation was canceled after the towers collapsed.

"They picked the weakest point, civil airlines. Where was [former President Bill] Clinton when they were planning this?" Moncholi said. "Now, everyone is affected. Pray no more innocent lives are lost."

Staff writer S. Mitra Kalita contributed to this story.